Urban quality and town planning A meeting with Marcello Vittorini - Abstract

Today a renewed attention to urban and environmental quality is a necessary condition for the achievement of proper and sustainable development. The real estate market stands as a significant example of this: in the historic and established districts, where the urban quality is greater, the value of properties is higher than in more recently built suburbs. Equally, entrepreneurs are more willing to establish their businesses in efficient and well-serviced industrial areas, with a good provision of facilities for both production and workers, than in totally unplanned industrial compounds. The "quality" factor, so clearly ignored for the past fifty years with results that are before everybody's eyes, has today finally regained importance. The long professional and academic experience of Marcello Vittorini must be viewed in this context. The outcome of his professional endeavor can be "experienced" in Ravenna where, possibly the only such case in Italy, he has coordinated three consecutive municipal development plans since 1973, dealing with such sensitive issues as the oil industry port, the coastal pine woods, and the town basin. He coordinated the municipal plans currently in force for the towns of Trento and Bolzano. Indeed, the fact that both capitals of the two autonomous regions sought his services is exemplary. Today Vittorini is coordinating two territorial development plans. The first, the PTC for the Province of Naples, is about to be presented to the municipalities involved, the other is the PTC for the Province of Brescia. Along the lines of these territorial plans, he is also working on a unitary development plan for the Roman hills region, commissioned by the Province of Rome. Marcello Vittorini's professional activity is characterized by an extremely pragmatic approach to urban and territorial issues. This type of approach has allowed him to develop appropriate and particularly efficient strategies in the many contexts in which he has operated. The key aspects of his activity have always been: the pursuit of urban quality, the proper use of local resources, a tight cooperation between public administrative bodies, a consistence between programming, planning and the available public resources. This meeting with Marcello Vittorini aims at opening a debate on a number of issues that I consider of extreme importance, first and foremost the relationship between town-planning -and the cultural debate around it- and the development of Italian towns and countryside in the post second world war period.

The lecture/interview took place on April 23rd 2003 as part of Professor A.L.Palazzo Town Planning Course. The meeting was coordinated by the author of this introduction